rm -rf

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/man-accidentally-deletes-his-entire-company-with-one-line-of-bad-code-a6984256.html

The beauty/horror of it is he was using something called Ansible, which is used as an extra layer in managing multiple servers. Not so convenient when it deletes absolutely everything on all your servers!

In the *nix world if you ask a computer for a rope to hang yourself it will say "sure, here you go".

With great power...

It does make me wonder about how robust my backup plan is. I have a super cheap VPS that is meant pretty much for rsync, but I haven't set it up so I'm dependent on my host to do backups to another machine... but if they run a script that deletes all backups on all machines, that doesn't help

rsync is great. here's a suggestion though I've not used them properly yet: https://hubic.com/en/offers/

I've also used Glacier (Amazon) but not extensively. I have a few dozen GB on there and they bill me something like a dollar a month.

some folks think the original story is a hoax, as he done the opposite of what someone should do after an rm -rf. I'd like to think the original balls up was correct, and he didn't expect the press attention.

rsync is great, but you have to be careful you don't blindly sync and overwrite or you can end up with two copies of your corrupted files rather than a corrupt one and a good one.

There are some other dedicated rsync services, but I got an insanely cheap, budget VPS to do this. But HubiC is pretty damn cheap too. 10 TB for 50/yr. I could even get by with the 100GB plan if I only backed up "data" rather than a server image (what my current backup plan does - 7 dailies, 4 weeklies and I forget how many monthlies for $5/month/server)

http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/8696/what-to-do-with-the-rm-rf-hoax-question

They deleted the thread

I'm not smart enough to know the marketing angle here... unless he's offering to do the same on other people's servers for a small fee

Another article
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3057235/data-center-cloud/that-man-who-deleted-his-entire-company-with-a-line-of-code-it-was-a-hoax.html

Funny, when I read the first article, I scrolled back to the top to see if the date was April 1.

'' I am also writing a book on Unix for Dummies Horror Stories and anyway that fact really happened to someone I know, but years ago, there was an article in the newspaper ''. If it really happened, happened '' before 2006 ' ', explains Marsala. Indeed, since if the string is not added to the specific command -no preserve the Unix system takes care to warn the user of the correct syntax avoiding disaster. The addition in question in fact tells the system to behave in a destructive manner. But according to Marsala's more: '' The Ansible tool with which I destroyed while 1535 server - adds - prevents these errors. Almost every serious administrator uses it, but among those who answered no one seems to know, otherwise they would know that what I have described can not happen ''.
http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2016/04/15/news/cancella_l_azienda_per_sbaglio_la_disavventura_tecnologica_di_marco_marsala-137693154/?ref=twhr&timestamp=1460722285000&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

It is rather strange, and also seems to be catching on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36072240

QuoteWeb hosting firm 123-reg has accidentally deleted an unspecified number of its customers' websites.

The company said it was performing a "clean up" operation on its VPS systems when an coding error in its software "effectively deleted" customer websites.

It started a "recovery process", but advised customers with their own data backup to rebuild their own websites.

The recovery process would seem to be 'carefully worded statement that suggests you use your own back up, or learn a hard lesson'